Monte Carlo

Maybe it's the contrarian in me, but nothing would be more likely to make me blade the game savagely than an email like that. The tone of the email is ridiculously precious, if it's that good then reviews will be of negligible impact anyway.

I have recently been enjoying: Florence & The Machine (Lungs): Siouxie and the Banshees meets Kate Bush. Strange, but in a groovy way.

I urge people to read The Moon's a Balloon even if they haven't a clue who David Niven was. It's laugh-out-loud funny and beautifully written.

Hmmm, I gave up on Doctor Who after John Pertwee and David Tenant, a gurning ham of an actor, drives me nuts. The show is so damn pleased with itself.

OK,

The BBC has more details, including a photo of the deceased. The relatives are trying to claim that they genuinely didn't know he was dead BBC linkie

^ Pretty common when people have been arrested in the UK.

Just Wiki'd BoB - that was 110 million in 2000... just as big a budget just a less glamorous location.

They filmed The Pacific in Australia with a massive budget (150 million US dollars, that's a lot of steel helmets and rubber rifles), BoB was filmed by and large in a parking lot in Hertfordshire here in the UK in 2000 / 2001. They used lots of CGI in BoB (some of it now looks slightly dated, for example the air armada scenes in Day of Days).

Quoted in 'Hero or Coward' by Elmar Dinter. Or, as Stalin famously said, "It's takes a brave man not to be a hero in the Red Army."

So, this German lady tries to smuggle her dead father's body out of the country on a flight to Berlin. To avoid paying

It's getting better, I will happily concede, now I've got to Amaranthine. Although the 10-quests-a-second is a bit much. Then I ambled off to the woods to fight with crazy elf chick and found... ack... another freaking Dragon Age puzzle. Noooooo.

Band of Brothers is awesome, for me personally it's one of the best pieces of TV drama ever made.

The Pacific is showing on satellite TV her in the UK (Sky exclusive) and is being hyped as the TV event of the 21st Century. Messrs Hanks and Spielberg's continuing mission to chronicle the experience of the American fighting man in WW2 continues apace, and laudable it is too. Last night I saw the first two parts back-to-back. But. Band of Brothers was better. Much, much better. I'll get to that bit later. What of The Pacific? It did a good job of explaining the war in this theatre as the Blitzkreig nobody writes about, a savage conflagration on a par with the Eastern Front as far as brutality is concerned and about how Guadalcanal was one airfield away from cutting off Australia. But after that it lost it's way. The source material probably doesn't help in this respect - the tight narrative of BoB (i.e. one cohesive unit based on Ambrose's accomplished if slightly hagiographic book) is lost as we meet three different protagonists in different units. It also doesn't help that they all wear identical uniforms, in the dark, in very confusing steadicam-shot firefights. This callsign spent numerous WTF moments trying to work out who was who, why, and in what direction. The enormity of the war seemed to subsume the human stories in a way BoB managed effortlessly. I do wonder why? One clever scene was the marine assault on Guadalcanal where Spielberg references Saving Private Ryan. I'm not wildly familiar with the minutiae of this battle so was expecting the Japanese MGs to rake the landing craft in some sort of tropical version of Omaha Beach. The marines puke into their landing craft, men look stoically into middle distance, naval guns boom overhead and.... Nothing happens - our happy leathernecks just wander onto the beach looking bemused. It's a neat moment. But apart from that it lacks the polish, humanity and narrative that makes Band of Brothers such a major achievement. The Pacific has a bigger budget and what is clearly a carefully chosen and accomplished cast of character actors... but it missing that certain something. It's early days, but already I'm struggling to identify with the marines of The Pacific as much as I did Easy Company. I'll stick with it, maybe it will take some time to get going, the views of other forumites are welcome. Cheers MC

^ Do you get a medal or some other sort of official recognition at the end?

I'll re-specc the dwarf commando chick to pick locks. There's an area in the first dungeon you need lock-picking for, for example. I have Nat at the moment, he's a pretty effective machine-gun. Those DS snipers are a bit of a handful, love the rapid-fire effect. Also took the advice above and re-specced my main sword and board warrior into a 50/50 sword / shield and dual-wield. One of the best warrior builds, more fun than the archer / dual-wielder I tried. Cheers MC

Wow, Stalin has his own Gulag deniers now?

Deathdealer at 03.00 FTW.

The theology is interesting if you are religious, but from over here in Atheistville it's pretty simple. Ying and Yang. You have to have a counter-balance to the big beardie fella, it just makes sense. The high medieval concept of sin and hell tells you everything you need to know about the peversion of organised religion into a tool of control. I'm not bashing religion per se, a bit of me quite fancies a bit of paganism or something vaguely involving naked chicks dancing around hilltops. But the devil / satan / beelzebub / old Nick needs no deeper theological exposition. It's like getting Da Vinci to paint the face on a scarecrow - nice but not especially adding much to the basic function. Cheers MC

I presume you are from Spain. Anyhow, comparing conscription to slavery is a bit hyperbolic, isn't it? Without getting all Heinlein / Starship Troopers on yo ass, if you live in a modern Western capitalist democracy (especially in Europe) you get loads of stuff that gazillions of folks from third world / failed states would happily serve two years for to enjoy. So, African child soldier = slavery. European kid in khaki peeling potatoes for two years = walk in the park. This, of course, is steering the topic to 'soft mercenary service' whereby a person joins a foreign military for that very reason. In the British army we have Gurkhas and, increasingly, soldiers from the Commonwealth. America has a lot of Latin Americans. These are people who are buying into a better way of life by, let's face it, risking their lives in some of the most dangerous places on earth. I take my hat off to them and would swap them for large swathes of the indigenous population in my country. What is emerging from this more-interesting-than-I-envisaged topic is that there are two themes developing. The first is that conscription, from a purely military POV is a crock. I buy into that. OTOH, point two is that even those of you that hated it intensely seem to see some benefit in the experience, however fleeting. The quintessence of that experience (i.e. overcoming hardship in a team of people with whom you have nothing in common) is priceless. From this POV conscription has something going for it. There is a malaise in modern society, am increasingly wondering if a way of capturing that experience and the compulsory delivering of it to 18-20 year olds is possible without the massive problems of mass conscription. Thankyou to all who have shared their experiences so far, maybe now we can hear from the regular armed services veterans too and see what they think. Cheers MC

--- YESTERDAY --- Peanut butter on toast Cornflakes 2 x mugs of tea --- Skipped lunch, my bad --- Grilled chilli-marinaded lamb and chicken with harissa. Rice, chickpeas, salad of white cabbage & cucumber, pitta bread Beer 1 x glass of Merlot

I'm about to say something you don't hear often... "It runs just fine on Vista...."

MTW2 (Grand Campaign Kingdoms mod) Found a bug that made me just want to give up. I tech up to the point where, by the mid 12th Century I can send two might fleets, equipped with elite troops (I've spent tens of thousands on this, right) to Cuba to begin my dominion over the New World. On the small islands just NE of Cuba the armies disappear. Not the fleets, just the armies. It's so frustrating it's unbelievable, my bad that there's no decent previous savegame. I don't know if its a "you just found the new world" movie trigger or something, but I've just dumped the campaign and will try again to get back into Awakenings.

If you buy into the whole Tamagotchi "the NPCs are real people" tendency that infest the Bio forums then maybe.